Afghans, Pakistanis Act Like Friends

February 9, 2002|By Douglas Jehl, New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan reached back more than a decade Friday to find common ground on which to build a future relationship for their countries, agreeing that "misunderstandings and misperceptions" of the past should be buried.

"They are buried," said Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's interim leader, responding to the statement by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, that they focus on the future. "Yes, they are buried," the general then echoed Karzai, who was making his first official visit to Islamabad.

It was Pakistan that provided much of the logistical, financial and ideological support for the Taliban during its five-year hold on Afghanistan. But it was also Pakistan, during the 1980s, that was the main base for Arab and Western support for the anti-Soviet mujahedin, a campaign supported by what later would become the Northern Alliance, which went on to oppose, and finally defeat, the Taliban.

Although deep divisions remain between the countries, Friday's fresh gestures of comity were easy, at least by one measure. With U.S. support, the two sides now cast themselves as leaders in the war against terrorism. They have been mostly in the same camp since October, when Pakistan finally agreed that Afghanistan should no longer be governed by the Taliban regime.

Karzai, who maintains a home in Quetta, Pakistan, was perhaps the Afghan leader best equipped to declare his government as Pakistan's new partner.

As a result of Musharraf's turning against the Taliban, Karzai declared that the Pakistani general was a leader poised to make Pakistan "the cornerstone of this region's work against terrorism and radicalism in the future."

For his part, Musharraf said of Afghanistan that he had been "extremely impressed by the able and sagacious leadership being provided by Chairman Karzai at this hour of need."

The two sides tried to gloss over the biggest substantive matters now dividing them. On the matter of Pakistani prisoners held by the Northern Alliance, Karzai said that his government hoped soon to release as many of the former Taliban fighters as possible.

On the 1.6 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, Karzai said he hoped soon to make it possible for them to return.

Given their long and porous border, Afghanistan and Pakistan still face a future that could quickly become unstable because militants in Pakistan opposed to the Afghan regime could be afforded easy infiltration. In recent months, Northern Alliance leaders have warned sharply against meddling by Pakistan.

As for matters within Afghanistan, Karzai was asked when he might ask American forces to leave his country and abandon their quest for Osama bin Laden. His answer suggested that he did not want that moment to come any time soon.

"Let's be very frank with you here again," he told a Pakistani journalist. "Without help from the U.S. we would have found it very, very difficult to defeat terrorism in Afghanistan."